During South Carolina’s Republican Senate primary debate on Tuesday, the sister of former Sen. Lindsey Graham failed to answer a national security question when asked by the moderator, admitting “national security is not my thing.”

“Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security threats to the United States, and if so, why?” the moderator asked.

“I’m just gonna be honest here, I’m not that informed on national security, so … but I do support the military,” said Graham, who was appointed to the position by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster in July.

“National security is not my thing,” Graham continued.

In the debate, she also mistakenly said South Carolina has a population of 50 million, instead of the correct figure of roughly 5.5 million.

Debate moderators repeatedly pressed Graham on foreign policy issues, to which she seemed to respond by deferring to the president’s decision-making.

“I fully trust President Trump when it comes to the war in Iran,” Graham stated, before adding that “Iran is the weakest they have been in 47 years. “The one thing that concerns me is we cannot let them get a nuclear weapon. So I trust President Trump and everything he’s doing. I think he’s got this, and I trust him on it.”

However, in contrast to her late brother, Graham repeatedly expressed that she is not in favor of unnecessary military escalations that could jeopardize American troops.

After her opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., declared that the U.S. had to exhibit “peace through strength” to prevent the invasion of Taiwan, and even hinted at a military escalation in the Middle East to defeat Iran, Graham expressed her concerns.

“[I am] concerned about troops on the ground,” Graham said. “I don’t know that that’s necessary just yet. I would like to make sure that we try all economic solutions before we put troops on the ground.”

Following the debate, Norman told reporters that “by her choice, she’s running for the United States Senate,” which, he added, is a six-year term and that one “need[s] to get fully versed in what issues you’re going to be dealing with.”

Graham and Norman did not reply to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. The two face off in the special election runoff on Aug. 25.

The American Mind’s podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Groypers, Grifters, and the GOP: Florida’s Primary Election | The American Mind Podcast

Florida is conducting a primary election to pick Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative successor. President Trump’s choice, Representative Byron Donalds, leads in the polls. Opposing him, political newcomer James Fishback leads a young, online centric and anti-Israel platform. Meanwhile, the Left coalition continues its reckoning with Woke, reordering to capture populist, pro-Gaza, and anticapitalist energy. Plus, backlash against Big Tech: data centers, Flock cameras, and more!

The post Groypers, Grifters, and the GOP: Florida’s Primary Election | The American Mind Podcast appeared first on The American Mind.

Watching some Democrats in recent days whose names are being bantered about for 2028, one thought comes to mind: “My God, they’re all just one step away from wearing ‘Free Linsday Clancy’ T-shirts.”

Three elected leaders in the past week have previewed a 2028 campaign that will be unmatched in its shallowness, radicalness, and depravity.

We start with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who’s now declared that giving birth is chill.

AOC Puts Her Eggs on Ice

Will she run for the Senate? Will she run for president? Will she run to the toilet suffering from morning sickness? AOC’s giving herself options. In fact, her new Polymarket odds of winning the Oval Office have surpassed those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

As for motherhood, in a time when clicks have become more valued than accomplishments, the perky Squad leader decided the whole world had to know she’s freezing her eggs.

Presumably, the eggs will be defrosted by the spike in global temperatures. Do you remember? A few years back, AOC insisted the “world would end in 12 years” if we don’t address climate change and was befuddled at the idea of folks having children when such a wretched fate awaits.

Now she’s freezing eggs apparently so at some future date she can pop out a Baby Fidel into her imagined climate hellscape.

On the bright side, moving from the Green New Deal to the Ween New Deal is a step in the right direction.  

That said, posting her intimate decision was just episode one of the shallowness heading our way in 2028. Episode two was AOC’s reaction to critics of her “Look at me and my eggs” show. 

“Republican men hate me ’cause they ain’t me and can’t be me,” she declared in a singsong tone that suggests she was auditioning for the musical version of “Mean Girls,” not preparing for the Oval Office.

It’s that old Pantene commercial, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Or Pee Wee Herman’s, “I know you are. What am I?” 

It’s certainly not “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” or even “I feel your pain.”

Kentucky Gov Wants to Kneecap the Constitution

Actually, the party slogan these days seems to be “Ask what your country can do for you and what you can do to destroy your country.”

With a new CBS News poll showing a majority of Democrats now bullish for socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America holding more cards than an octopus dealing blackjack, trashing the foundations of the American government is the hot fad for those seeking higher office. Like Pet Rocks. Pet Rocks used to bash Uncle Sam upside the head.

This week, Kentucky governor and potential 2028 candidate Andy Beshear called for abolishing the Electoral College.

Kamala Harris is calling for it too, but she’s a Californian, so there’s some logic behind it. No Electoral College means the same people who give you communism in New York and caca on L.A. sidewalks will decide your president. But no Electoral College means Kentucky voters become practically worthless in presidential elections.

Beshear’s tossing his own people—and, dangerously, our Constitution, under the bus—or more accurately, under the stampede of the Democratic Socialists.

Jon Ossoff’s Dirty Trick

Finally, there’s current 2028 flavor of the month Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Ossoff is being marketed as a cross between John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., and John the Baptist. A Hollywood handsome political force speaking truth to the wicked king and his harlot.  

As Daily Signal Executive Editor Rob Bluey so eloquently exposed, Ossoff, whose Senate career has been as empty as Mitch McConnell’s chair, in a move as calculated as a SpaceX launch, threw into the public square like a bag of manure the allegation that President Donald Trump is having an affair with executive assistant Natalie Harp.

(Can the party no longer contemplate the idea of an attractive, accomplished woman working honorably in a high position? A legitimate question, given their idea of a woman working in a high position is Admiral Rachel Levine.)

During a recent rally, Ossoff declared that Trump wants to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”  Given Trump’s history, there can be only one meaning. Ossoff climbed on a professional woman like she was a jungle gym to raise his own profile.

Now Ossoff’s claiming he wasn’t implying anything about an affair. Sure. And Papa’s happy when Eric Swalwell shows up to take his daughter to prom.

The politician executed his task. Garnering the attention his accomplishments can’t while, as Bluey pointed out, slurring a young woman in an effort to scar Trump. Ossoff knew the media would run with it. And run they did. Like Saquon Barkley they ran.

At Monday’s inspiring White House meeting between Trump and 16-year-old lifeguard hero Ryan Williams, CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Trump about Ossoff’s remark.

Trump, predictably shredded Holmes and compared Ossoff to Pee Wee Herman.

That’s hardly fair. The late Paul Reubens didn’t use as much make up when playing Pee Wee Herman as Ossoff does playing a serious politician. As the Washington Free Beacon reported last month, Ossoff has spent more campaign money on makeup than anybody in Congress running in the midterms, far more than even the aforementioned AOC.

To his credit, Ossoff has not posted a video showing off a vasectomy, called for replacing the Constitution, or accused Trump of abusing Hayden Panettiere to death.

But the campaign season is young.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Say the word family in public, and watch what happens.

For some, it evokes religion. For others, patriarchy, control, or exclusion. It has become a rhetorical Rorschach test. Before anyone asks whether a family is healthy, someone has already decided whether it’s progressive or regressive.

That should concern all of us. Because the family isn’t a political position. It’s a developmental fact.

The family isn’t a political talking point. It’s the most powerful public health intervention we have. I’ve spent years as a licensed clinical social worker, and now as a doctoral candidate in neuropsychology, and I have rarely met a suffering adult whose childhood family was irrelevant to their story. For many, it was the wound. For others, a stable family was protective.

Long before children meet a pediatrician, a teacher, or a police officer, they meet a family.

The family is the original public health department.

Attachment Isn’t Weakness. It’s the Foundation of Everything.

Modern public health has become so focused on the individual that it has forgotten the developmental environments that produce healthy individuals in the first place.

We measure health through diagnoses, laboratory values, insurance coverage, and access to care. These things matter enormously. But human beings are not isolated bodies moving through the world unattached. We are biological, psychological, social, and relational beings.

Our culture tells us that independence is the mark of maturity. However, developmental science reveals a more complicated reality: healthy independence is built through early dependence on trustworthy people.

Autonomy is not the opposite of attachment. Secure attachment is what makes autonomy possible.

Children learn how to calm down because someone first helps them calm down. The nervous system learns safety before it learns language.

Before children understand politics, their brains are asking more fundamental questions: “Am I safe? Do I matter? Can I trust the people responsible for me?”

The brain is not partisan. It develops in the relational environment into which it’s born.

The Science Is Clear. The Politics Are Not.

The evidence is hard to dismiss.

Nearly two-thirds of American adults report at least one adverse childhood experience, and roughly one in six reports four or more. The CDC has estimated that preventing such experiences could reduce adult depression by as much as 44%.

Responsive relationships help build brain architecture and buffer children’s stress responses. And children who thrive despite serious adversity typically have at least one stable, committed relationship with a supportive adult.

In clinical practice, secure attachment is rarely the wound. Its absence often is.

Family stability cannot guarantee human flourishing. But family instability can cause deep and lasting harm.

Not Every Family Is Good—and That’s Exactly Why This Matters

We do not have to idealize the family to admit that it matters.

Strengthening families cannot mean preserving every household at any cost.

A family that requires any member to endure violence for the sake of appearances is not being strengthened. It is being protected from accountability.

In practice, the damage rarely arrives wearing a label marked family instability. It appears as the new mother who leaves the hospital physically stable but emotionally alone; the teenager who looks “lazy” when she is actually struggling to believe her life has meaning; the father who wants to be present but has no role model for tenderness, responsibility, or repair.

A family may look functional from the outside while quietly collapsing under stress, secrets, fear, poverty, grief, or shame.

Families take many forms. Some families wound. Some families heal. Some do both. Either way, families form us.

Taking families seriously does not mean ignoring trauma, abuse, or poverty; it means investing in the supports that help families become safer, healthier, and more resilient.

That includes maternal mental-health care, home-visiting programs, parenting and communication education, father engagement, caregiver support, and protection for those escaping abuse.

If we care about women’s health, we must care about the relationships women live within. If we care about children’s development, we must care about the adults who shape their earliest experiences. If we care about mental health, we must care about whether people have places of belonging, love, and repair.

Before funding programs that repair the consequences of family instability, we should ask how policy can help build safe, stable, nurturing homes in the first place.

Defending the family is not nostalgia. It is prevention.

From Principle to Practice

The Institute for Women’s Health, where I serve as a doctoral research fellow, is a women’s-health policy organization working to improve women’s health, strengthen families, and protect the right of nations to shape policy according to their own laws and values.

As the United States assumes the role of Secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, the Institute and other supporters have an opportunity—and an obligation—to demonstrate what those commitments mean in practice: lower maternal mortality, safer childhoods, protection from violence, better mental-health care and meaningful support for mothers and fathers.

Real progress should mean less violence, healthier parents, safer children, stronger families, and respect for national self-determination. Progress should be measured by whether human beings are actually flourishing.

When representatives of the declaration’s 41 member nations gather in Washington this September, the real question won’t be symbolic. It will be practical: Which policies actually help women, children, and families flourish?

The Question We Can’t Afford to Defer

The question is not whether every family is good. It’s whether our society can afford to treat family stability as optional.

Safe, stable, and nurturing family relationships are the global health infrastructure — as foundational as clean water or medicine.

The family is not merely a value to defend.

It is a foundation to strengthen.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Thirty-two Cubans died when American forces entered Caracas on January 3, 2026, to capture Nicolás Maduro. Cuba and Venezuela are more than a thousand miles apart. Why were Cubans dying in defense of Maduro? How did a small Caribbean island become so deeply invested in the survival of another country’s dictatorship?

To answer those questions, we have to go back nearly seven decades to a revolution that promised liberation but spent a lifetime exporting authoritarianism and reshaping the politics of an entire hemisphere.

From the moment he seized power in 1959, Fidel Castro knew that the survival of his revolution depended on its spreading throughout South America. In the years that followed, Havana trained Marxist guerrillas across Latin America, dispatched troops to fight Soviet proxy wars in Africa, supported Syria in its war against Israel, and embedded intelligence officers inside allied dictatorships. Today, it’s widely reported that Cuban nationals are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

If there is one lesson the Cuban regime has taught us, it is that dictatorships do not always have to become stronger to survive. Sometimes they survive by becoming indispensable to stronger powers. For Cuba, the Soviet Union came first. Then Chávez’s Venezuela. Today, Russia, China, and Iran have each found value in keeping the regime afloat. Cuba has vexed every American president since Eisenhower not because it is economically or militarily powerful, but because it has repeatedly positioned itself as the hemisphere’s most persistent hub of anti-American influence.

That history helps explain why Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made Cuba a central priority of the Trump Administration’s Western Hemisphere strategy. Some dismiss this focus as ideological or personal. They are mistaken. The administration’s Cuba policy is strategically sound because the Cuban Revolution was never content to remain on one island.

Communist Subterfuge

Wherever there has been an opportunity to challenge the United States and its allies, Havana has taken it.

The Cuban regime’s interventions around the world reveal a consistent foreign policy: weaken the United States, strengthen its adversaries, and export the revolution wherever the opportunity presents itself. If there has been a Marxist insurgency to support, an anti-American regime to sustain, or a hostile adversary looking for a willing partner, chances are Cuba has been there.

Cuba’s hostility toward the United States has not been limited to distant battlefields. It has promoted its agenda in cities across America and directly threatened the lives of U.S. citizens on American soil.

Beginning in the 1960s, Cuban intelligence recruited, trained, financed, and equipped Puerto Rican militants who later formed or led terrorist organizations such as the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and Los Macheteros. These groups carried out bombings, assassinations, robberies, and other terrorist attacks across Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland, including the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City.

In 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by a Miami-based humanitarian organization named Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people, three of them American citizens. Earlier this year, Cuban border guards opened fire on a Florida-registered speedboat off Cuba’s northern coast, killing five Cuban Americans and injuring several more.

The battlefield does not always involve bombs or bullets. Cuba’s intelligence services have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to penetrate the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Victor Manuel Rocha secretly served Havana for decades while rising through the ranks at the U.S. State Department, serving on the National Security Council, and eventually representing the United States as ambassador to Bolivia. Ana Belén Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s leading Cuba analyst, passed classified military information to Havana, exposing undercover American intelligence officers and distorting Washington’s understanding of the regime. Walter Myers and his wife Gwendolyn spent almost three decades working for Cuban intelligence while Walter held sensitive positions at the State Department. Few hostile intelligence services have assembled a roster like that.

Espionage is only one part of Havana’s playbook. For decades, the regime also invested in a quieter campaign to shape opinion and spread its revolutionary ideas inside the United States.

Through academic exchanges and solidarity organizations, conferences, and cultural programs, the regime cultivated activists, intellectuals, and future political leaders who were sympathetic to the revolution. The Venceremos Brigade was created to bring thousands of Americans to Cuba under the banner of solidarity with Castro’s government. Many of those who participated returned to the U.S. convinced they had witnessed a revolutionary success rather than an authoritarian dictatorship. Some eventually entered positions of influence themselves, including Antonio Villaraigosa and Karen Bass—both of whom went on to serve as mayors of Los Angeles.

The State Department’s recent report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, also reveals that Cuba has cultivated relationships with revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, offering training, political support, refuge, and direct access to senior Cuban officials. It concludes that these influence efforts have recently been linked to Antifa-affiliated activists, participants in demonstrations following George Floyd’s death, and the recent anti-ICE protests.

American intelligence has also long warned that elements of the Cuban regime facilitated international narcotics trafficking. A 1985 CIA assessment concluded that Havana was not merely turning a blind eye to the drug trade but providing traffickers access to Cuban waters, ports, and airspace, making it easier to move narcotics into the United States while complicating American interdiction efforts.

Viewed together, these activities over the past 67 years reveal a clear pattern: whether through espionage, ideological influence, or criminal networks, Cuba has repeatedly acted as a force multiplier for America’s adversaries.

Cuba’s Real Business

There’s an old saying in Latin America: Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres—“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Today, Cuba stands shoulder to shoulder with many of America’s main adversaries: Russia, China, Iran, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, and, until Maduro’s downfall, Venezuela.

The Cuban regime has survived as long as it has by adapting and changing sponsors. Someone will always be willing to pay for its strategic location. When one patron disappeared, another stepped forward.

Many anti-American regimes have invested handsomely in keeping the Cuban regime afloat. Russia has forgiven billions of dollars in Cuban debt and, together with Iran, supplied Havana with more than 300 attack drones. China has also extended favorable loans and donations to Cuba, financed infrastructure, and poured money into the country’s telecommunications network through companies like Huawei and ZTE. Venezuela and Mexico have kept the lights on in Havana by sending subsidized oil, despite having little room for such generosity, as both struggled with serious economic challenges of their own.

Why?

Certainly not because Cuba is an economic powerhouse. These governments are investing because Cuba gives them something far more valuable than monetary returns: strategic access to the United States.

Britain fought wars over territories that today seem insignificant—Malta, Gibraltar, the Falklands—not because of the land itself, but because of the geographic position those islands occupy.

Cuba is no different. It is the equivalent of an unsinkable aircraft carrier at the crossroads of the Caribbean. If you are Russia, China, Iran, or any other hostile power seeking to collect intelligence on the United States, project influence into the Western Hemisphere, or maintain a foothold only 90 miles from Florida, few places on Earth are more attractive.

That is why the Trump Administration’s Cuba policy is fundamentally about ensuring that America’s principal competitors cannot continue using the island as a platform to project power into the Western Hemisphere.

The Wrong Question

Predictions of Cuba’s collapse have been circulating for decades. Look no further than Andrés Oppenheimer’s 1992 bestseller Castro’s Final Hour. More than 30 years later, the title serves as a reminder of how often outside observers have underestimated the regime’s ability to survive.

The more important question is not what happens if Cuba collapses, but what happens if Cuba succeeds.

What if Russia further expands its intelligence presence? What if China deepens its surveillance infrastructure on the island? What if another million Cubans flee and attempt to come to the United States? What if Havana continues exporting the intelligence, security expertise, and political repression that have helped sustain evil dictatorships across Latin America? These are not hypothetical concerns. They are already happening.

For too long, Washington played damage control with Cuba. Meanwhile, the regime continued doing what it has done for nearly seven decades: exporting instability and inviting America’s adversaries into the Western Hemisphere. Migration is one of Cuba’s most effective tools for doing this. From the Freedom Flights to the Mariel Boatlift to the Balsero exodus, every major upheaval on the island has sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans toward American shores.

The current exodus, however, makes those crises look modest. Since 2021, more than one million Cubans have fled the island, with Customs and Border Protection reporting record-breaking numbers arriving at the southern border. Havana has long understood that migration can be used as a weapon against Washington, and it is willing to turn humanitarian suffering into political pressure. What happens in Havana does not stay in Havana, and our neighbors’ problems have a way of becoming our problems.

That is why Cuba cannot be dismissed as simply another poor island with a struggling economy. It is so much more than that. It is the strategic hub of an authoritarian network stretching across the hemisphere.

Imagine, for a moment, a different Cuba.

A Cuba no longer supplying intelligence officers to Caracas or security advisers to Managua. A Cuba that no longer hosts Russian intelligence platforms or Chinese surveillance infrastructure, or serves as the hemisphere’s main exporter of revolution. A new government in Havana would not solve every problem in the hemisphere overnight. But it would remove the regime that has spent decades working overtime to perpetuate those problems. That is why turning Cuba matters.

Falling Dominoes

Everyone remembers the Monroe Doctrine, but far fewer remember Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary. James Monroe argued that hostile powers should stay out of the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt recognized something just as important: instability invites those outside powers back in. When disorder takes root close to home, America cannot pretend it is someone else’s problem.

For much of the past three decades, Washington forgot that lesson. As American attention shifted to the Middle East, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, China financed ports, Russia rebuilt intelligence networks, Iran expanded partnerships, and authoritarian regimes consolidated their grip across Latin America.

America’s adversaries rediscovered the Western Hemisphere long before Washington did.

What many have begun calling the “Donroe Doctrine” is less a new doctrine than a return to an old strategic instinct. The objective is not to dominate Latin America or intervene for intervention’s sake. It is to prevent hostile powers from turning the Western Hemisphere into another arena for great-power competition.

That is where Cuba enters the picture.

Secretary Rubio understands that changing Cuba is about changing the strategic balance of the entire hemisphere.

The Trump Administration’s own assessment reflects that view. In its 2026 report on Cuba, the State Department concluded that the regime remains a significant national security threat through its espionage, ideological influence operations, partnerships with hostile powers, and long history of supporting anti-American actors. The report reflects the Trump Administration’s view that Cuba should be treated not simply as an authoritarian state but as an active strategic challenge in the Western Hemisphere.

That is why Cuba has become such a priority. Turn Cuba, and the strategic map of the hemisphere changes.

Russia loses one of its most valuable intelligence platforms in the Western Hemisphere. China loses one of its closest technological and intelligence partners. Nicaragua loses its most experienced revolutionary mentor. The authoritarian network that stretches throughout Latin America becomes weaker, more isolated, and more vulnerable.

The administration does not simply see another authoritarian government 90 miles from Florida. It sees the operating system that has helped sustain much of the hemisphere’s anti-American architecture since 1959.

Cuba is just the first domino.

The Cuban Endgame

The fact that 32 Cubans died defending Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela tells us that Cuba was never just another small, poor Caribbean dictatorship. It spent nearly seven decades punching far above its weight—exporting revolution around the globe, supporting authoritarian regimes, penetrating American institutions, welcoming hostile powers into the hemisphere, and projecting influence far beyond its shores. It became the connective tissue linking much of the hemisphere’s anti-American architecture.

While American attention drifted halfway across the world to the Middle East, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, Cuba continued projecting influence throughout the Americas while welcoming America’s adversaries into its own backyard.

Geography, however, never changed.

Nearly two centuries ago, John Quincy Adams recognized that Cuba was too strategically important for any great power to ignore. America’s adversaries understand that today. The Trump Administration has rediscovered that same reality.

America cannot choose its geography. But it can choose whether hostile powers are allowed to exploit that geography.

For 67 years, the Cuban Revolution refused to remain on the island, wreaking havoc throughout the South American continent and presenting serious threats to U.S. national security.

America’s Cuba policy should ensure that the Communist regime meets its end.

The post Havana’s Long Shadow appeared first on The American Mind.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, are traveling with their family to historic landmarks, natural wonders, and destinations across the country in a video series tied to the United States’ 250th birthday.

The post DOT Sec. Sean Duffy Hits the Road with Family for ‘Great American Road Trip’ Series appeared first on Breitbart.

A new ad in the Michigan Senate race between targeting Democratic socialist Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed features his own comments about how football is "racist, sexist, homophobic, and filled with toxic masculinity."

The post Exclusive: NRSC Ad Slams Abdul El-Sayed over ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Comments appeared first on Breitbart.

Sleazy CNN’s chief Mean Girl, Erin Burnett, hit a low unseen on CNN since Jake Tapper interviewed Stormy Daniels to specifically ask her about Donald Trump’s penis.

The post Nolte: Sleazy CNN Falsely Accuses Natalie Harp of ‘Jumping Into the Trunk’ of a ‘Car’ appeared first on Breitbart.